To win over Hong Kong and Taiwan, Xi’s China must break a 2,000-year tradition

China’s “one country, two systems” formula in Hong Kong is failing miserably. After more than six months of large-scale pro-democracy protests – including violent clashes with police – the city’s voters dealt a powerful blow in November to pro-mainland parties, which lost 87 per cent of seats to pro-democracy rivals in district council elections. 

The significance of that election should not be underestimated. While district councils have little power, they select some of the 1,200 electors who choose Hong Kong’s chief executive. In the next election, pro-democracy parties will fill nearly 10 per cent of those seats.

The election also had important symbolic implications. District councils are elected in a fully democratic process (compared to only half the seats in the Legislative Council). With an impressive 71 per cent turnout, the election was widely seen as a vote of no confidence in Beijing-backed Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor.

Some people have lost faith in the prospect of maintaining democracy within one country, two systems. This is reflected in growing demands for independence. While independence remains a fringe idea – owing partly to recognition of China’s uncompromising stand on territorial integrity – almost no one under the age of 30 in Hong Kong identifies exclusively as Chinese.

A similar backlash is also occurring in Taiwan. Having enjoyed de facto independence since 1949, Taiwan was supposed to be drawn back into the Chinese fold by one country, two systems. But that model’s failure in Hong Kong has hardened anti-China sentiment, and turned voters away from the political parties which favour closer ties with the mainland.

This represents a shift from last year’s midterm elections, when the Kuomintang secured key victories over the ruling, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. In fact, that outcome was probably less about desiring closer ties with Beijing than about delivering a sharp rebuke to the DPP.

Indeed, after President Xi Jinping, in his 2019 New Year’s speech, urged Taiwan to follow in Hong Kong’s footsteps, President Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP revived her popularity by reasserting Taiwan’s sovereignty. Bolstered by the Hong Kong crisis, Tsai now seems to be coasting towards a landslide victory in January’s presidential election.

A political lesson from Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen for HK protesters

Far from enabling China’s peaceful reunification, the one country, two systems model is undermining it. Perhaps this was inevitable, owing to a cause more fundamental than Xi’s centralisation of power, the Communist Party’ increasing interference in Hong Kong’s affairs, or even the basic contradiction between a one-party regime and a multiparty democracy. The Chinese state, built on a centuries-old paradigm of political order, cannot cope with intergovernmental conflict.

Modern democracy is based on division, within society and the state. In society, different groups compete for representation. In the state, there is a horizontal separation of powers (among the legislative, executive and judicial branches) and a vertical division of powers (among national and subnational governments).

For countries with a history of foreign domination, such divisions may seem like weaknesses that can be exploited by outsiders using a divide-and-rule strategy.

China does maintain a separation of powers. But it is much more comfortable with horizontal, than vertical, checks and balances. For more than 2,000 years, imperial courts appointed a censor-in-chief to manage ministers and grandmasters of remonstrance to criticise emperors.

Why Beijing has a perennial problem with foreigners – and Hong Kong

Conflicts between national and subnational governments, however, were historically divided into three categories – warlordism, insubordination and foreign threat. To this day, China’s rulers distrust leaders with a local base, often choosing outsiders as provincial governors and party bosses.

From the Chinese government’s perspective, “Hong Kong ruled by Hongkongers” was already a risky concession. So it ruled out a directly elected chief executive and worked to suppress the opposition.

This backfired. China’s interference undermined the ability of older “democrats” who identified as Chinese to deliver the changes the people demanded, so they were replaced by younger “localists”. When China attempted to suppress these figures, resistance intensified.

By early this year, when Lam introduced a bill that would make it easier to extradite criminal suspects to China, the people of Hong Kong were fed up. Many young protesters believe they have so little to lose that they effectively seek destruction.

China doesn’t need democracy, it needs a strong leader like Xi Jinping

China now faces a dilemma. Unless democracy is shown to support the dream of civilisational resurgence, it will lack legitimacy among Chinese nationalists. But the only way to revive one country, two systems is to accept intergovernmental conflict – a great leap towards embracing democracy.

Institutionalised respect for regional identity and autonomy has eased separatist sentiment in Tamil Nadu, Scotland and Quebec, and it could do the same in Hong Kong, possibly even Taiwan. But if China continues to suppress intergovernmental conflict, the collapse of the one country, two systems model will be only a matter of time.

Chin-Huat Wong is a professor of political science at the Jeffrey Sachs Centre on Sustainable Development at Sunway University in Malaysia. Copyright: Project Syndicate